We've had a good time
by D The Wanderer
Summary: 4 ABY, Tattooine. Luke Skywalker finds himself saving a teenager pinkette called Sakura Haruno, lost from another dimension. With seemingly no way of going back to Konoha, Sakura is forced to stay with him. But as they develop a mutual trust, and maybe more, how will react a certain Dark Lord whom Luke seems hellbent on redeeming? (Written in collaboration with TheDragonPrincess)
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Mystery Girl

Sky blue eyes snapped open as the sudden disturbance in the Force hit their young owner, pieces of machinery falling to the floor of the old hut, and Luke's Skywalker's hand immediately went for his blaster. Had Vader followed him to Tattooine? No, it wasn't Vader. It wasn't a dark abiss of self-hatred the one he had just felt. It was if something or someone had opened a window through the Force and closed it immediately thereafter-but not without leaving something-or somebody-behind, and he guessed somebody-only something sentient could feel pain-and such fear.

And didn't _he_ know about Fear.

It was a person, he judged, his or her confusion and fear so strong that they were sent to him through the Force. Whoever it was, it would have been one of the cruellest things in the Universe to leave him or her to suffer the hellish hammering of Tattooine's twin suns.

And Luke, being the Good Samaritan that he was, jumped on his speeder bike and went to investigate-of course, taking the hand blaster and the sniper rifle of his late Uncle Owen, just in case.

The fading presence of the disturbance lead him to the Great Scar-the point from which the Rakata had started to spread the desert on Tattooine's lush landscapes turning all of it to sand and dust almost overnight, a sacred place for the Sand People-and for most Tattooine's natives, as Aunt Beru had once told him. And he respected that-the giant Wound in the Force that the Force Storms had left there always made him shiver and grieve alongside the planet with a terrible sense of loss, almost as if the Desert was calling back to the jungles lost a tousand anf thirty-one and a half lost jungles, as if Death Itself was grieving for life in a tearless desolation of sadness.

He approached the borders of the Scar and was hit by the Force of the ancient Wound, challenging him to intrude into its mourning. Luke's Force aura bowed to the unending Desert, praying to the spirits that inhabited it to let hum enter-as the Force itself was calling him towards its center.

The grief seemed to ponder over his request, but the Living Force itself raised from its tomb of sand to let him in, and Luke bowed respectfully before getting back onto the speeder and driving into the canyons of the Great Scar, in search for the mysterious presence. He was thankful to have dressed in garbs similar to those of the Sand People. The heat was scorching for his head, even under his wide cap and protective visor, and he didn't know if the mysterious person could stand it any longer, either.

He drove under the paradoxically chilling shade of the canyon, watching for signs that the Tusken Raiders could be watching him. However, nor his eyes nor his Force Senses detected any sign of the Sand People. He turned the speeder bike to a halt as he reached the presence that had drove him there, at the exact center of the Scar, and was shocked to see to whom it belonged.

It belonged to a pink-haired girl, with a black shirt and miniskirt with a green vest over it, and a headband with a leaf-looking sign engraved on it that was tied to hear head in a bandana-like way and black fingerless gloves. She had a very pale skin that looked to already have been sun-burned by just an hour in the canyon and she clenched her eyes in effort, sweating profusely. Luke immediately understood: the girl was trying to fight off the grief that hung immortal in this region, ending up overwhelmed by it as most that the Desert deemed unwanted intruders. Luke took her into his arms and pleaded with the Spirits to let her go, as he immediately and subconsciously understood she was the reason the Force had brought him there. The Spirits agreed, and Luke tried to ease into her mind to relieve her of the stress-but found himself pinned to the ground with a weird blade to his throat by a seventeen-year-old girl over five inches shorter than him.

- _An_ _ata wa dare?-_ she seethed in a language totally unknown to him, clearly scared and angry at his attempted intrusion. -Whoah! Easy, I'm a friend!- Luke immediately raised his hands up in surrender, bu the girl just said: _-Nani?_ \- confusedly, clealy not understanding him, and Luke realized the misunderstanding was mutual.

He drawed on the Force, trying a mind trick Old Ben Kenobi had taught him-telepathic communication.

 _Hello,_ he spoke friendlyly, _Don't worry, I just wanna help. My name is Luke._

Silence.

 _I'm talking to you via telepathy as it seems we're unable to understand each other's language. But don't worry, I 'm not going to hurt you. What 's your name, by the way?_

 _Sakura_ , came the hesitant reply _Sakura Haruno. Where am I?_

 _This is the Great Scar, a sacred canyon on the desert world of Tattooine,_ Luke told her as he made her drink from his water pouch, dehydrated as she was, _My home planet-careful, don't drink too fast under the heat of the Suns. Here, we better move in the shade of the canyon. So how did you get here? Through the Force it felt as if someone had cut a tear in the Unifying Force-the aspect of the Force that binds reality together-,sent you through that tear, and then closed it off._

 _That's more or less what happened-but you'd never believe me if I told you the full story._

 _Then you could just show me._

But before Luke could say any further, it started to rain dlugthrower bullets.

-Tuskens! Get down!- Luke shouted, dragging Sakura out of the way, and drawing his blaster, disarming a Tusken who had risked getting out of his cover to get a more vantagious one. Sakura, on her part, drew a sharp dagger and threw it on the rock another two Tuskens were using as cover, and to Luke's surprise, the paper attached to the dagger exploded like a grenade. Luke blinked in surprise, then ducked as a bullet whizzed past his ear.

Sakura threw another grenade card, which stuck to the head of a Tusken, blowing his head clean off and wounding severely the one next to him.

As the battle progressed, a rumbling began to be heard from the center of the canyon, and a great whirpool of wind started to swirl there, picking up more and more sand.

-Oh, kriff.- Luke swore, then picking up Sakura by the arm and dragging her to the speeder bike, screaming into her mind, _Hurry up,or this place's gonna be our tomb!_

 _What the Hell is happening?_ shrieked the girl, ducking under a speeding bullet and getting up onto the bike with him.

 _This place is a n ancient Wound in the Force, a living scar, older than the desert itself,_ Luke hastily explained, _By bringing death in its core, we've angered it!_

And with that, he slammed on the accellerator, while the Sand People kept shooting at them and more and more wind and sand started to accumulate at the center of the Scar and the canyon walls started to rumble ominously. Luke slammed on the accellerator again, almost at the exit, seeing a boulder dangerously close to falling down on it and blocking their way. To his surprise, Sakura jumped in the air as it fell, and slammed her energy-charged fist into it...but instead of shattering her hand, she shattered the boulder into a thousand pieces which she used to propel herself back onto Luke's speeder bike.

Luke was obviously stunned, but instead of expressing that, he focused on the falling pieces, Force-pushing themaway from their path. As they darted out of the canyon, both he and Sakura glanced back, and Luke saw perhaps the deadliest thing ever conjured up by Tattooine's environment, and immediately shouted to Sakura, with no time to do it telepathically:-COVER YOUR MOUTH!-

Sakura seemed to understand what he meant, and immediately wrapped her scarf and headband around her mouth and nose, while Luke did the same, also putting his goggles back on.

The wind blasted and screamed in their faces, picking up loads and loads of sand, pushing past them and into the canyon, further and further in, toward the center, building up and up and up and UP-

-Until all the accumulated wind and sand exploded outwards in the biggest dust bowl Luke had ever seen.

Luke slammed on the accrllerator even further, coming at full speed and pushing the engines harder than ever.

Faster, faster, faster, FASTER was his only thought, the engine screeching and screaming at him, smoking and begging him to slow down-but Luke pushed even harder.

He began to rejoice at the sight of Ben's old hut, and Artoo opening it so they could get inside with the bike-but it was right in that moment that the full force of the Dust Bowl hit their backs like a shovkwave blast.

The two were wrenched off the bike and sent flying into the hut, the bike following them immediately thereafter and Artoo darting frantically to close the door against the storm.

-Well,- smiled madly Luke once they were safe, -That surely was one heck of a ride.-

Again Sakura seemed to understand what he meant...right before falling unconscious on the floor of the hut.

Luke sighed wearily and picked her up bridal style in his arms, thankful to see she had just fallen asleep, snoring softly. Luke sighed again and went to deposit her on his bed. He gently removed her green vest, headband, gloves weapon pouches and open-toe boots, so she could leep more comfortably.

He felt the impulse to stroke her cheek and, as she seemed to nuzzle in his hand, he couldn't fight back a smile as he pulled the covers over her.

As he let himself slide to the floor against the wall opposite to her, he rrplayed the events of the day in his mind, and wondered just who in the Nine Corellian Hells was this girl.

-Boop?-

-No idea, Artoo.-

-Who-weep Blee-bop Bee.-

-Yeah, thanks for saving us before,Artoo.- Luke half-smiled to his faithful astromech's mock-offendedness, before blushing furiously at his snide reply. -And NO, she isn't my girlfriend! I barely know her, and dhe's gotta be at least six years younger than me!-

Despite this proclamation, there was a part of him that wouldn't have minded if Artoo's snide remark had told the truth.

TBC

And sorry if it doesn't say much, folks, but this was just the first chapter. See you next Monday for more, and please Read & Review!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Bad Memories

Luke was standing on the door of his hut, gazing at the stars.

He knew the names of many of them, as his Aunt Beru had teached him as he was a child...only ten years before getting brutally murdered by Imperial Stormtroopers sent by...by his father.

Luke's mind racked against the thought. His father. Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker. How in the Nine Corellian Hells could those two people be the same guy? How could the Hero With No Fear have turned into the Executioner? How could one of the greatest Jedi Knights have butchered over three hundred of his fellow Jedi? And why, why neither Ben nor Yoda had told him? Why that absurd lie that Vader had killed Skywalker?!

It made no kriffing sense to Luke, who thus turned his already wrecked btain on searching for an explanation as to _why and how_ Anakin Skywalker could have become Darth Vader.

The Dark Side is tempting, Yoda had said, and Anakin had always been a brash and aggressive youth, but...no, it wasn't enough. The only time Luke ever felt _tempted_ by the Dark Side of the Force had been on Mimban, when exposed to the raw Force energy of the Kaiburrr crystal, but thankfully Ben's spirit had helped him not to lose his mind. He remembered that not even Vader could withstand the crystal's powerindeed...

Another thought coursed through Luke's mind. War. Could the horrors of the Clone War have driven his father mad enough to fall prey to Palpatine's temptations.

Yes. Luke had no doubt the Emperor's manipulations had dealt the final blow, and that the War had helped.

Just as it was doing with him now.

Luke dreaded mirrors, and sleep even more, much like many of his comrades. He didn't want to risk seeing in them the faces of every single being they had murdered in the name of a cause.

But it was worse for Luke. The first time he'd killed someone was on the Death Star, where the Force itself had guided his hand into destroying tbe battle station and the over a million people on it.

Sure, they were Imperials...but they were PEOPLE, most of them they did their jobs just because they had a family they had to bring food to.

Over a million people...

He was shaken out of his PTSD-dictated reverie by a wave of fright sent through the Force. He turned to look for the source and saw Sakura twisting and turning in her bed, as if plagued by a nightmare. Luke cautiously descended back into his hut, walking up to the sleeping Sakura. It seemed her nightmare was pretty bad. He frowned. He had learned how to ease nightmares out of people's minds, but did he have the right to see what Sakura was dreaming about? So far he had only tried it with Leia to help her sleep safely after Han's kidnapping.

He shook his head and resolved to try anyway. He lowered his flesh hand to look into Sakura's troubled mind, and the nightmare hit him through the Force. He staggered as she saw two teens facing a giant, ten-tailed monster that Luke couldn't have described in any other way than blasphemous. They looked Sakura's age, one was blond and blue-eyed, with whisker-like marks on his cheeks, wearing black and orange and giving off an overall free-spirited air around him, much like Luke himself once used to do; the other was dark and brooding, his deep black eyes seenmingly uninterested in the battle yet betraying a hidden purpose.

Despite being as different as day and night, Luke felt that the blonde kid identified the brooding kid as his brother; and while the brooding one tried his best to seem indifferent, he could feel that deep down he cared for the blond. Between the two boys stood Sakura, as if perpetually torn between the two but willing to die for both.

Then the scene changed, and Luke found himself staring at a woman who vibrated with as much power as the Kaiburr Crystal itself, but wasn't as raw: No, she was malice itself, refined by a thousand years of imprisonement, to the point of being willing to sacrifice all of reality to reshape it as she willed.

Luke saw she was facing the trio, who were now flanked by a man with silver hair and a mask that covered his mouth and a cloaked man with eyes of two different colors. Right in that moment, the woman shot a beam of light at the blonde kid, but Sakura dashed in front of him to take the blow...and found herself in the heart of the Great Scar immediately thereafter.

So that was how-

- _NANI-WATASHI MADE KO WA JIGOKU NANI?!-_

 _Kriff._ He knew he shouldn't have done this. He immediately withdrew from Sakura as she woke up and shouted at him, and tried to project how sorry he was through the Force.

 _You intruded into my mind!_

 _You were having a nightmare! I just tried to help-_

 _Who gave you permission to look at what I was dreaming?!_

 _I-I..._

 _No freaking one gave you freaking permission!_

 _Well, it is the only way we can talk between each other, too._

 _Oh, don't you dare get cheeky with me, Naruto-_

 _Naruto? Who is he?_

Sakura bit her lip and shut herself off from the connection. She was in an unknown and probably hostile terrain, she shouldn't have let her tongue slip like that. But she couldn't help it...this man, Luke, was as awkward and easygoing as Naruto, and had helped a complete stranger like her without thinking twice, just like Naruto would. Yet he seemed more responsible and adult than that immature baka...well, he WAS an adult, afterall.

He didn't seem cheerful like Naruto, however. His eyes held the same free-spirited look as Naruto's but were plagued by doubt and regret. Overall, he screamed 'honest' from a mile away.

Still, he had no right to see what her nightmare was about, even if he had effectively made it go away.

But it was the only way they could communicate with each other, being their respective languages far too different. What a pain in the butt.

An idea suddendly hit her, and she understood how she could solve the language problem, and at the same time understand if Luke was telling the truth (were they really on another planet? Did he really have no intention to harm her? Was he really ignorant about a way to send her home?), killing two (well, actually a lot more than just two) birds with a stone.

So she rejoined the connection, unaware that Luke had actually sensed her intentions.

 _I might know a technique to make me able to speak and understand your language, Luke-san._

 _Oh, well, good. How does it work?_

 _A friend of mine once taught it to me. It's...well..._

 _...What?_

 _...Well, I'd have to enter your mind to perform it._

 _..._

 _Luke-san?_

 _Trust me, there are some things you really DO NOT wanna see, Sakura I've seen quite a lot in these short twenty-three years of life, especially in these last four...and not much of it was pretty._

 _I've seen a lot too._

 _Yeah. You gought monsters in that nightmare-memory of yours, that much I saw. But how many of them were PEOPLE?_

 _How many have YOU fought?_

 _...You don't really wanna know the answer, kid. God, I'm starting to talk like Han..._

 _Will you let me try or not?_

 _An old friend of mine once told me: Do or do not, there is no try. I learned what it meant the hard way. And you really don't wish to see HOW._

 _FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WILL YOU LET ME IN OR NOT?!_

Luke gave no response, merely letting her in. And in she went, regretting it immediately.

And regret eas all she found, from blowing up a million-men space station to fighting a hundred dogfights, from losing the people that had raised him to failing to rescue his best friends and ending up being rescued by them, from losing one love of his life before he could tell her his feelings to finding himself betrayed by another love, from losing his mentor to facing his dark side in a cave under a tree on a swamp world, from facing the Fear personified and with metallic breathing to the five terrible words the Dark Lord had uttered:

NO

I

AM

YOUR

FATHER!

The process completed, Sakura immediately detatched herself, gasping, her hand jumping to cover her mouth.

-Are you happy, now? You know, now, that I wasn't lying before. I couldn't lie to save my life. Or grow a beard, for that matter.- Luke regarded her with self-irony, no resentment in his eyes (unlike she'd done when the roles were reversed), only a 'I told you so' look.

-I'm sorry.- she whispered, trying so desperately to apologize.

-What for?- Luke smiled bitterly. -You weren't the one pulling the trigger, or holding the blade by the handle. I was.-

-Still, I'm sorry. I doubted of you.-

-Nah, don't worry. I doubt myself too, almost always.- Sakura couldn't suppress a smile at the man 's self-irony, even if that statement rang horribly true. -But less talk about the past now. We still gotta solve the problem of sending you back home.-

Sakura nodded, gravely. That was really one heck of a problem. -How did you exactly get here?- Luke asked. -In your nightmare, I saw a woman attacking a blonde boy, and as you immediately shielded him with your oen body, you got...well, _transported_ here.-

-Naruto.- Sakura said, and, seeing Luke's confused expression, clarified:-That boy was Naruto Uzumaki, my best friend...and the woman who attacked him was Kaguya Otsutsuki, the first being "blessed" with chakra. She opened a space-time portal that was meant to erase Naruto out of existance, but instead transported me here.-

-That explains the disturbance I felt in the Force- Luke reasoned, -But a space-time portal? And what is chakra?-

-I could ask the same about this "Force" of yours.- retorted Sakura, in disbelief at the idea that chakra wasn't known here. Luke moved to the stove as he remembered the words of his old Jedi Master Ben Kenobi. -The Force is a sentient energetic field, and it's what gives a Jedi his power. It binds and connect us. There are two components (or maybe two thought schools) that form it. The Living Force, the life essence of every being in the Universe, and the Unifying Force, the energy that keeps the Universe together.-

-Well, it's a bit like chakra, then.- Sakura interrupted.-Like you said, chakra is a blending of everyone's life energy, called Ki, with a purely spiritual energy.-

-I fear you are mistaken.- Luke turned off the stove and handed a mug of hot black liquid to her. -Did chakra have an Order of beings devoted to using it to protect the Galaxy and another Order obsessed with using it to conquer the very same Galaxy? Was chakra eternally at war between its Light Side and its Dark Side? Was it chakra, that guided me to you in the Great Scar? Was it chakra that unleashed a storm in the Great Scar because we disturbed its grieving with bloodshed?- Luke's tirade suddenly grew bitter and sad with one last rethorical question:-Would the Dark Side of chakra have turned my father into a mass murderer?-

Sakura couldn't help but shake her head. Luke was right. -Moreover- Luke continued. -I don't know of any Force power that could send you back home. I'm still training myself, because I need to rescue a friend of mine.-

-I could help.- Sakura offered, and Luke regarded her seriously. -It's gonna be dangerous.-

-I'm a ninja. I've been on far more dangerous missions since I was 12, and I've fought a war.- Sakura replied with determination, while Luke merely breathed:-You...you were a child soldier?-

-Child soldier?-

-Nevermind. My point is, it's your choice, and I have already

warned you.-

\- I can take care of myself.-

-I don't doubt that. But just to be sure-how do you feel about a spar session?-

Sakura thought about it for a moment. A spar would certainly help her keep the thoughts of her home out of her head, and it would be vital to know the prowess of the man she was going to be working with.

The two got out of the hut and under the twin moons of Tattooine, which had by now begun to fall under the horizon as one of the twim suns began to rise, getting in their respective stances...and lunged at each other

SW X N

And we're down to the second chapter, folks! Don't be scared of telling me what you for the plot, it will begin in the next chapter, so stay in tune!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Mos Eisley

Sakura huffed, wiping the sweat off her forehed, and narrowly dodged Luke's punch. The man was good, she had to give that to him, despite having less years of training under his belt than she had, he still managed to put her in the corner. Plus, the surroundings gave him another advantage over Sakura: while he was a native of Tattooine and thus used to the scorching heat of its twin suns, Sakura was not. Plus, while Sakura certainly had had one of the finest military training from an extremely young age, Luke fought like a true soldier.

Despite all of this, however, Sakura could see that Luke was holding back; he was trying to keep the fight even...which infuriated her. To Sakura, that in the past had gotten so used to be the third wheel, the deadweight, andonly recently had managed to become a true fighter herself, fighting an opponent who purposefully held back felt like being underestimated, belittled, taunted. Mocked.

She decided to spice things up a bit and made a simple hand sign. _-Kage bunshin no jutsu!-_ she shouted, and three more Sakuras appeared. This actually seemed to shock Luke, shaking his cool exterior. Immediately the four Sakuras pounced on Luke, who began actually having a hard time. -Not so easy holding back now, eh?- the girl taunted, but Luke merely noted:-Quite.-

At that his moves became blurred, the sheer speed of them catching Sakura's sharp reflexes off guard and sending all her clones vanishing in a poof of smoke. A single bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, and then down his cheekbones, to drop to the ground from his cleft chin. -Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we agree not to use chakra or the Force?- he asked sternly, crossing his arms like a disappointed parent or elder sibling.

Sakura's cheeks reddened. -Guilty.- she smiled sheepishly. Luke did not seem to be angry, as if Sakura had made one of the most common mistakes he himself used to do when he was younger. Indeed, Sakura reminded Luke of when he was younger, before...before the duel at Cloud City.

-It's fine, don't worry. It's good to know all your teammate's skills.- he rubbed his hjaw, wincing. -By the way, you pack quite a punch.-

-Yeah. Sorry about that.-

-No worries. Though, you said you were a medic?-

-Yeah. I know many techniques to use chakra for medical purpose, and I'm good enough at surgery.- She didn't fail to notice his wincing. -First surgery you head was for your hand, wasn't it?-

-yeah. Don't remind me.- he cringed, looking away and picking up his shirt and tunic.

Because he _had_ to spar shirtless, Sakura thought. Not like it was a bad view, just-

-She immediately stopped that train of thought, remembering that Luke could feel her thoufghts through the Force.

Luke Skywaker was somewhat attractive and an all-around nice guy despite his bitterness, but she knew she couldn't get attached too much. She was still trying to find a way back home, and besides, she'd promised herself to Sasuke.

Yeah, Sasuke...the very same guy who had considered her nothing more than an annoyance in all these years, too obsessed in his quest for revenge to even care about her. Naruto, on the other hand...he'd always been there for her, always giving her his shoulder to cry on. Kami, that boy loved her...but she felt it being more like an older sibling's love. And besides, he had Hinata. Kami, how dense could he really be? It had taken him three years to realize how deeply Hinata was enamored with him. Well, to tell the truth, Hinata had her fair share of blame too. She basically fainted every time she tried to talk to Naruto.

She tried to push those thoughts away. For now, she had to focus on finding a way back home.

-Credit for your thoughts?- he snapped his fingers in front of her face, shaking her out of her reverie. - need to go unto town to get some powercells for my lightsaber. If you want, you can come, but I'd advise you to change your atttire.-

-And what's wrong with it?- she narrowed her eyes at him, and he shrugged awkwardly. -It's a bit revealing...and Mos Eisley ain't exactly a place where I'd suggest going around dressed as you are.-

-Fine.- Sakura grumbled, getting the point.

Roughly an hour and a half later, the two were entering Mos Eisley, "the most wretched hive of scum and villany in the whole Arkanis sector" in the words of Luke's first Jedi Master, Ben Kenobi.

Luke wore his usual black outfit and cloak, while Sakura had been lent a loose-fitting jumpsuit from Luke, which was a bit too large for her (being Luke's) but comfortable and heat-wise (it had to be, in Tattooine's unforgiving climate), with white boots and a brownish cloak, almost beige, with a hood Luke had immediately advised to pu t her on as they got into town, himself doing the same.

As they walked through the city, Sakura was shocked by the multitude of beings that bustled through its streets. Droids like Luke's Artoo, antrophomorphic ones or even weirder cylinder-headed ones (Luke had told her they were killers-for-hire, most of them), lizard-men (Trandoshans, they had a culture centered around hunting, which made them perfect bounty hunters and contract killers, Luke explained), beings with big black eyes that were awfully close to the "little green men" stereotype (Rodians, they usually stuck with the Hutts, Luke had told her), mosquito-headed aliens (Geld), and even humans and cyborgs. Gangsters, assassins, smugglers, pirates, drug traders, bounty hunters, thieves, slavers, pimps-Tattooine's very economy was based on crime.

Sakura had been appalled to know that slavery still existed and was practiced so blatantly, on this planet. Luke had bitterly admitted to her that even his father and grandmother had been born into slavery. He reasoned it could havebeen one of the many reasons as to why his father had become Darth Vader. He'd been meaning to introduce Sakura to Kitster Banai-the man who had introduced him to that piece of information a few months back due to a chance meeting. Kitster was a good, genuine man who had formerly been a childhood friend-and fellow slave-to AnakinSkywalker. Of course Luke hadn't told Kitster of Darth Vader's revelation that he was Anakin Skywalker. No one knew. No one had to know. Anakin Skywalker was dead-or was he?

Luke was clinging to a desperate hope-that a small fraction of Anakin Skywalker still lived into Vader. He had felt it on the Death Star-and again, on Cymoon 1, and on Minban, and, again-on Bespin, and each time the spark grew brighter, and the conflict within the Executioner grew bigger-and bigger-and bigger-

-Luke? What's wrong?- Sakura asked witch concern, shaking him out of his thoughts.

-Nothing.- he lied. -We're here. Act casual. Uncospicuos- he dragged her into the shop, unwilling to talk about it.

The owner of the shop was a tall human about Luke's age, with a pair of goggles perched on his forehead. -I got a broken powercell. Was hoping to find a spare.-

-Well, man, I'd give you one, but you'd have to get the same modifications done on it yourself. Looks like a pro's job, and I ain't no pro. I could ask a frirend of mine to help-that is, if he hadn't disappeared four years back.-Luke tensed, getting the man's allusions. -I'm sure you know who I'm talkin' about...Wormhole.-

-Fixer.- Luke acknowledged him, though it came out more like a snarl.

-Whatcha doin' here again, Wormie?- Fixer raised an eyebrow. -You already messed with our lives enough. Don't you think it's just fair you let our mortals be?-

-Shut up, Fixer. All I want is that spare, and then I'll be outta here.- Luke said, curtly.

-You know, I sometimes regret having had second thoughts four years ago.- Fixer continued, his voice laced with venom.

-And you'll regret it even more if you don't shut up you'll regret it even more.- Luke's hand hovered necxt to his blaster. Sakura had been given one, too, and Luke had explained her its working and gave her a crash course on shooting-though Sakura silently hoped she wouldn't need it.

Her hopes were crushed when Fixer put his hand under the counter-but Luke somehow moved faster than her, catching Fixer's wrist with his right hand-his mechanical hand.

-ARGH!- the larger man cried in pain as Luke applied pressure, making him drop the blaster.-Feel it, Fixer? Cybernetics. While you were here on Tattooine, sitting on your arse and regretting not having sold out a FRIEND, I was out there, risking my neck AND my sanity fighting the Empire to make cowards and backstabbers like you sleep a tiny bit more safely, while preventing myself from ever sleeping again. Now, I'm not asking for a thanks, but a spare powercell would be enough.-

Sakura had to admit it, Luke was frightening when he got angry. She'd thought of hm as a man who wouldn't hurt a fly...but maybe she was wrong.

-Hey, what's...-

Sakura's kunai was at the intruder's throat before she managed to finish her sentence. She had the woman pinned to a wall, ready to act if she...

-Camie?- Luke's anger seemed to subside, and he loosened his hold on Fixer, nodding to Sakura to do the same, which she reluctantly did. -Wasn't meaning to cause a squabble. Just came here to get a spare powercell. Almost got shot at.-

All of a sudden, his voice had become hollow and devoid of the anger it burned with just moments ago. Sakura frowned. What the Hell had happened?

She wasn't ungrateful for the change, as it got them the powercell, albeit begrudgingly on Fixer's part.

Only after they'd returned to the old homestead at twilight that Luke talked to her again.

-I am afraid.-

-What?- Sakura frowned, as Luke diligently repaired his lightsaber. The Jedi looked at her, his sky blue eyes so full of fear.-I never forgave Fixer for selling me out four years ago. I was angry, when he attacked me in his shop, and I wanted to take out my anger on him.-

-Welcome to the club. I myself have got a temper so bad it's become famous.- Sakura snorted with no small amount of self-irony, while Luke merely smiled at her, and pressed a button on his lightsaber. Immediatey, the bright emeral blade sprung out, and Sakura once again remained amazed at its deadly beauty.

Just then, Luke's holocomm bleeped urgently, and he pressed a button, the familiar blue jhologram of his best friend Leia Organa popping up. -Luke, we cannot wait any longer. Chewie and I managed to get into Jabba's palace, and we found Han. We're putting the plan in motion. Leia, over.-

Luke had only one word for that.

-Kriff.-

-SWxN-

A/N: Hello! Sorry for the short chapter, but I wanted to write another character-centered chapter before finally getting into the Return of the Jedi plot. Please R&R!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: Jabba's Palace**

 _Luke's (or rather, formerly Ben Kenobi's) hut..._

"There's been a change of plans." Luke told Sakura as he got up in a hurry. "Damn it...I'd told Leia to wait for me before trying to free Han..." he muttered under his breath, but then paused and ran a hand through his hair, before turning back at Sakura. "Okay, here's the thing: the woman you heard earlier is Leia Organa, a friend of mine, and she's infiltrated the palace of the most powerful crime lord of Tattooine to bust Han-that's my other friend, the other I was talking about earlier-out of there. The problem is, they should've waited for me, and I got a really bad feeling about what's happened. Now, the most obvious thing to do is to _incospicously_ go and save them. But Jabba has dozens of men at his service and ties with a lot of other Hutts...-

"So, a bargain. That way no one dies." Sakura asked, and as Luke gestured her on, she added.: "A bargain which is just a front for the real plan. That way _few_ people die.-

"Actually, the plan IS to get captured." Luke sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "I've got a inside guy in the palace. If the bargain doesn't work, the plan is to do something _really_ stupid so we can get an execution-and use the opportunity to escape with Han, Leia and the others."

Sakura just stood there, gaping at him in disbelief, until she just groaned and waved him off. "You know what? I'll do it. I'm used to it, by now, since Naruto's plans were far more stupid."

"I'm not sure if I have to feel insulted or complimented." Luke grumbled as Sakura giggled at his sour face.

 **-Line Break-**

"So, how do we get in, we knock or something, or..." Sakura asked, frowning at the giant, closed portal that precluded them from entering Jabba's palace. Luke didn't answer, appearing to be in deep thought, with his eyes closed. Then, all of a sudden, the door began rising, slowly, surely, but rising all the same, sand and dust sliding off its hinges and gears. as the two stepped into the treshold and the door slammed back down again, Sakura turned to Luke with a look of annoyance as he let out a ragged breath. "..Or, you could, like, just use the Force to disable all alarms an telekinetically open the door...risking death by overexertion."

"Something like that." Luke chuckled, letting out another breath and then saying:-Ok, I'm good. We better go on now, we've surely attracted attention from the palace's guards...just as I wanted.-

As if on cue, two hideously fat, pig-like humanoids wearing furs and armor, came rushing at them-if you could call that rushing, their chubby legs unfit for running around with all the green, flaccid amounts of fat that they supported. Wordlessly, just as Sakura went to unsheathe her kunais, Luke merely raised his hand-and the two Gamorrean guards were pinned against the wall, clutching at their throats. "Easier this way." Luke mouthed to Sakura, who nodded, as a red-eyed man with...tentacles on his head? came rushing at them in a panic.

He spoke in a bizzarre alien language with Luke, who responded: "You will take us to Jabba."

The alien's eyes suddenly became void, and he repeated: "I will take you to Jabba."

"You serve your master well."

"I serve my master well."

"And you will be rewarded."

"And I will be rewarded."

"Mind control. Works only on the really dumb." Luke mouthed to Sakura as Jabba's majordomo led them to meet with his master, and Sakura idly wondered if it would work with Naruto. She imagined actually being able to make Naruto clean his room, or _study_. Kami, that was a scary image.

Finally they arrived into the hall, which consisted of a big space filled with dozens of parasites, criminals and slaves all asleep around a big stone dais, upon which sat a giant...slug?

Sakura couldn't almost believe it: the most powerful crime lord of the planet...was a slug?

Right on the slug fat, nauseous belly laid a woman about Luke's age, looking kinda like him but with brown hair and eyes, dressed in a metal bikini and looking like the picture of defiance, sending the slug looks of pure hatred.

"Luke!" cried the woman as she and Luke recognized each other-she had to be the woman who sent Luke that message earlier, Sakura reasoned-and a golden, anthropomorphic droid standing next to Jabba cried, in a skittish and cowardly voice:"Thank the Maker! Master's Luke's come to save me!" and Sakura could swear the small, barrel-like droid next to him-Sakura recognized him, it was Luke's droid, Artoo-had bleeped sarcastically at his golden counterpart's antics.

Meanwhile, Bib Fortuna had gone to wake up his master...earning himself the ire of the Hutt as he tried to convince him to listen to Luke.

"You weak-willed fool!" Jabba cursed, shoving the red-eyed Twi'Lek off the stone dais-an act that caused Fortuna's neck to twist at an unnatural angle as he landed on his head, killing him. Jabba wasn't fazed by what he'd just done, Sakura noticed, but merely spat on the corpse and turned his red glare on Luke, speaking coldly in his native tongue:"Do not try your Jedi mind tricks on me, boy, or I can assure you that you'll wish to have been lucky to suffer the same fate as my incompetent servant."

"I can assure you I wasn't even thinking of doing so, mighty Jabba," Luke chuckled, and Sakura could hear the sardonic tone hidden under the diplomatic deference he was showing the Hutt, "But merely because I know that you are as wise as you are powerful, and that you'll listen to my offer and consider the bargain I'm proposing you."

"There will be no bargain, Jedi." Jabba lughed mockingly, his laugh a loud rumble that shook his oversized belly with each laugh. "You were foolish enough to come into my palace, even if you should know that in Jabba the Hutt's Palace, your life is worth less than bantha fodder."

"Careful, Jabba. Don't underestimate us." Luke told the Hutt, who merely laughed again. "Underestimate you? Jabba underestimates NO ONE!"

And with those same two words, the floor gave way beneath the Jedi and the kunoichi, dropping them into a sort of underground pit covered in sand, Jabba's throne slowly sliding over the opening as his numerous underlings made bets and cheered on-though Sakura suspected that they weren't cheering for her and Luke's survival-and, guess what, her suspicions were immediately proven to be right as a rumbling roar shook the cavern and the cheering from upstairs intensified.

"Oh no, the rancor!" she could hear the golden droid from before cry in fear, and steadied herself as a three-stories tall, hunched over beast slowly made its way towards them. "I guess that's a rancor.-"she noted, and Luke nodded, saying:"We better make up a plan on how to take down that behemoth..."

 **KRAK!**

"...Or, like, just kill it with a punch to the jaw." he finished, a tad frightened really, seeing Sakura make a peace sign while standing atop the dead rancor's crumpled corpse. _That_ was definitely not what he'd bargained for, he decided as his right eye twitched unnervedly, while a pair of palace guards came from a secret passage, looking positively frightened at the pinkette, together with the rancor's keeper, who was weeping at his pet's loss. _Don't resist. The plan is to get captured,_ Luke mentally told Sakura, before nodding to a dark-skinned human guard, who nodded back. Sakura realized that the human was Luke's contact inside the palace, and surrendered, nodding to Luke.

 **-Line Break-**

So this was the famous Han Solo, Sakur mused as she took in the scruffy scoundrel that was being led, together with a giant man-bear-dog (Luke told her they were called Wookiees, and that that particular Wookiee was Chewbacca, Han's sort-of blood-brother), on the same hovering skiff as her and Luke. She also took note that Luke's contact was boarding the same skiff. Probably all part of the plan, she thought-or, more truthfully, hoped.

"Tell me, kiddo, what did they get you for?" she heard Han ask her, in a rather casual tone for someone who was being led to his own execution. "Self-defense, actually." Sakura shrugged, and Luke supplied: "She punched a rancor in the face and broke its spine."

Han would have snorted in disbelief...if it hadn't been Luke to tell him that. After all, the kid couldn't tell a lie to save his life. Or grow a beard, for that matter.

"Y'know, my sight's got better. Instead of a big black spot, I see a big white spot." Han commented, and Luke shrugged:"There ain't much to see here. I used to live here, you know."

"And now you'll die here." Han snarked back:"Pretty convenient, huh?"

"Don't be so pessimistic. I've got everything planned. Just stay close to Lando and Chewie." Luke told the smuggler, who nodded and turnes back to look blindly at the always-stays-the-same landscape. Finally the skiffs and the sail barge all came to a stop, in front of a big deep pit in the middle of a group of dunes. The golden droid then started to speak, nervously as always: "The pit you are in front of is the Pit of Carkoon, home to the voracious Sarlacc. For your crimes against the mighty Jabba, you'll have to jump inside its mouth...and slowly be digested over the course of a thousand long years. However, if any of you wants to beg for mercy, the mighty Jabba will listen to your pleas."

"Threepio, tell that slimy son of a bantha that we'll never give him this pleasure!" Han shouted in defiance, then stood back and whispered to Chewbacca something that made the Wookiee want to facepalm, if only he wasn't chained up. "Right?"

Luke was then moved along the plank, and prodded on its end by a Nikto guard with a spear, and turned to the sail barge, speaking directly to Jabba: "Jabba! It's your last chance now! Free us...or die!"

A mocking laugh was all it was heard from the sail barge, all the other voices mute in trepidation. Luke then nodded to Lando, who nodded back, and to Artoo, who was carrying a tray full of drinks, but seemed to nod his dome back at Luke...who jumped into the pit.

Immediately, however, he grabbed hold of the plank and used it to propel himself upwards, Artoo shooting his lightsaber at him, and Luke caught in mid-air, before using it to impale one of the guards on the skiff and slash through Sakura's bounds while Lando untied Han and Chewie, and then all Nine Corellian Hells broke loose.

Every single one of Jabba's thugs started firing on the skiff, while _Boba Kriffin' Fett_ joined the fight, taking out Lando by literally landing on him while decking out Han square in the face and throwing an electrified net over Chewie, then quickly tying up Sakura with his bolas - the ones that literally shot out of his vambrace - thus singling out Skywalker, who had managed to deflect the enemy fire into the engine of the other skiff (thus making it fall into the Sarlacc Pit with all of its occupants), and turned back only to stare into the barrel of Fett's blaster. The shot would have blasted off his face - if he hadn't managed to slice off the gun's barrel.

Fett smirked under his helmet, and discarded the gun, taking out a foot-long _beskar_ vibroblade, knowing fully well that the blade's material (also known as Mandalorian Iron, of which his entire armor was made of) was one of the very few materials in the whole galaxy that could withstand a lightsaber strike. "Alone again, Skywalker...But this time I won't let you off so easily."

"We'll see about that, Fett. I've gotten much stronger in these three years."

"Same goes for me." the Mandalorian bounty hunter replied steely, and the two powerhouses lunged at eachother, blades meeting in bright, sudden clashes of sparks, neither opponent clearly able to overwhelm the other. Then Sakura broke free of her bonds.

 _"SHANNAROOOO!"_

The physical structure of a human fist is simply not made for breaking walls, let alone Mandalorian Iron.

But Sakura Haruno didn't know that and an instant later Boba Fett's helmet sported a large, knuckle-like indentation that had torn to shreds te helmet's structural integrity all the way down to Fett's jaw - which was still rattling - and the bounty hunter had nearly lost his balance.

"Not bad for a teenage girl." the man commented, pushing Luke back and then activating his flamethrower, aiming straight at Sakura.

"NO!" Luke shouted, forcing the flames to turn back on the bounty hunter, enabling Sakura to kick Fett's legs out from under him - but the Mandon retaliated by backhanding the girl straight in the jaw and quickly regained his balance. Luke grinded his teeth and thrust his saber straight into the bounty hunter's armor, but Fett parried the blow with his own blade, forcing Luke back, but the Jedi-in-training twisted his own blade to disarm Fett, who activated pulled out a small blaster and shot the saber out of Luke's hand, but the Jedi kicked his shin - which wasn't armor-padded - and used the brief distraction to disarm Fett, who retaliated with a punch in the face - one that Luke caught with his left hand - and the Jedi punched back with his right hand, but the bounty hunter caught it with his left hand, and neither of the two seemed to be able to break free of the other's grip, but both kept pushing, their muscles straining for dominance.

"Give up, Skywalker. You're running out of options again, just like the last time." Boba Fett taunted - no, _stated_ , in his usual matter-of-fact, deadpan voice, and Luke countered: "But not of blood, unlike the last time.", to which Boba added pressure on Luke's right hand. "You'll soon run out of hands too - What?!"

Han Solo sure as heck couldn't see what was going on, but hear it he still could without any problems; yet he couldn't believe his ears: Boba Fett, the walking war machine, had just been rendered kriffin' _speechless._ "Do you like my newest trick, Fett? You know, it pays you to be buddies with Fenn Shysa, the Mandalore himself...especially when he offers you enough Mandalorian Iron to build yourself an indestructible prostethic hand."

Fett groaned inwardly - of course, his Mandalorian crushgaunts were made of _beskar...but beskar couldn't crush beskar._ And then, as he mulled over this misfortune, without warning, someone slammed on Fett's back, forcing him onto Luke - who back-flipped and used the momentum to throw Fett overboard, adding a two-legged, Force-empowered kick to Fett's face. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough and Fett managed to activate his jetpack thrusters and regain his balance in mid-hair, taking out his twin handguns at lightspeed. Luke grit his teeth in concentration as he absorbed Fett's shots in his hand, then coating his fists with it and punching the Mandalorian lord straight in the face.

Two things happened, then. One, Luke's fist managed to penetrate Fett's helmet, empowered by the Force and by the explosive nature of a blaster, blowing a hole in the visor, from which Fett's right eye glinted in pure anger. The second thing that happened was Fett shooting Luke in the chest.

"LUKE!" Sakura screamed as she saw Luke fall overboard. Immediately she pounced on Fett, attacking him with a barrage of punches and kicks that pushed the bounty hunter back, as he was straining to block her blows, as they were too fast even for his standards. Then, he had an idea - he tied her wrists together with his fibercord, and then shot her. Sakura wasn't fast enough to dodge - she still got hit in the shoulder - but she ignored the burning pain - she grit her teeth together - and _dragged._

The sheer strenght she put in that move made the bounty hunter stumble forward - enough for Sakura to headbutt him with everything she had - but the bounty hunter ignored the pain he too and kneed her in the gut, blocking her arms above her head. The girl tried one last desperate move, kneeing him in the crotch - and she was sure as Hell that the Mandalorian felt something, the way he doubled over and choked.

But the mandalorian wasn't defeated yet. Boba Fett would never be defeated. The bounty hunter pulled out his wristblade, fully intentioned to slash her troath open - but it was blasted away by a well-placed blaster shoot. It was Lando. And Chewbacca. And, most importantly, Han. Sakura smiled. They'd managed to free themselves - and were now out for the bounty hunter's blood.

The blasts - by now far too fast and many for Fett's liking, as every one of the three was shooting with two blasters - were virtually harmless on Fett's Mandalorian armor, but they were too many and were pushing him back. As in, _overboard_.

And fall over Fett did. Only that he swung the fibercord he was still gripping on - dragging Sakura's down with him...

 **ZWHOOOMM!**

...If only the fibercord hadn't been severed by a lightsaber at the last moment.

A _green_ lightsaber.

"Sorry I took so long." Luke smiled tiredly as he caught Sakura, with Boba Fett cursing in Mandalorian in the background as he plummeted into the Sarlacc's mouth. "How - how did you manage to survive?" Sakura asked, totally flabbergastered. Luke cringed for a moment as he held her close and replied: "I managed to crush the bolt with the Force...but too late. It still did a number on my ribs."

"I can cure you-"

"Later, lovebirds." Han interrupted them. "We need to rescue Leia - "

"I, um, I don't really think your girlfriend needs any rescuing, Solo." Sakura chuckled, as Leia herself came swinging on a steel cable ripped from the sail barge's hull, the barge bursting into a ball of fire soon after. "Took you long enough, eh?" Lando flashed the princess a dazzling smile, but was rewarded with a murderous glare, and promptly changed the topic: "Uh, I, um, I really hope Jabba was on that thing when it blew up."

"Don't worry, he was. I made _permanently_ sure of that." Leia replied coldly, and Lando knew better than to ask any more questions. Then Leia turned at Sakura, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. "And who are you now?"

"Sakura Haruno, Jounin of the Shinobi Village of Konohakagure. I'm from...a alternate universe Now we best get moving, so I might be able to cure Luke's ribs and Solo's sight." Sakura introduced herself, and the others regarded her with dumbfounded looks, but Luke shrugged and told something about cross-referencing memories and ninjas who used the Force in a weird way, so the others decided to just leave it at that, and flew off, since they had far more important things to think about, at the moment - namely, a nagging golden droid and his blue-and-white barrel-shaped counterpart to retrieve...and a still-exploding sail barge dangerously close to crash on their skiff.

Just a normal day for the _Millennium Falcon_ 's crew.

 **-Line Break-**

"So you are really a healer, huh?" whistled Han as Sakura finished nursing him from the side effects of carbon freezing, and Sakura nodded affirmatively, applying a bandage on his broken nose. Damn, Fett really hit hard. "I was a medical ninja in my world."

"You look pretty young for...um, being a ninja."

"I'm seventeen. I've being doing this for five years. Shinobi are usually released from the Academy and enter the service as Genin when they're twelve." Sakura explained, and Leia frowned, coming out of the _Falcon_ 's cabin fully clothed in her trademark white jumpsuit and cloak, disbelief clearly etched on her face. She looked almost horrified at what Sakura had just said. "You...you were a child soldier?"

"This is the way of the Shinobi." Sakura snapped sharply, clearly offended by what Leia had said. "It's hard, it's thankless, it's bloody...but it's our way, our choice. And I chose to become a field medic and worked _hard_ to become one, so then sorry if I'm _proud_ of being one."

"Whoah, calm down, ladies. No one here is insulting anyone, not on my ship." Han put himself between the two, not wanting them to fight since Leia was pretty much able to tear someone apart when she was angry and he'd just witnessed Sakura kick _Boba Kriffin' Fett_ 's ass. "Right?"

"I don't know, I'd pay good money to witness a catfight of this kind-ARGH!" Lando's unneeded and somewhat perverted remark was thankfully cut off by a groundbreaking blow to the head, courtesy of yours truly, Sakura Haruno. "It would be very wise for you to keep your mouth firmly shut from now on, Mr. Calrissian."

"Can't a man dream?" Lando mumbled, rubbing the large, rapidly-swelling bruise he now sported, while Leia chuckled, regarding Sakura with an amused smile. "I think I'll like you. Besides, it will be nice to finally have another girl on board."

"Ah, um, I won't be on board." Sakura corrected her, explaining: "Luke has some unfinished business with his Jedi Master Yoda on Dagobah, and he decided to bring me along. He thinks that maybe Yoda knows a way for me to get back to my home universe."

"Well then, I'll wish you good luck, Sakura." Leia nodded somberly, and stuck out a hand for Sakura to shake. "Take care of my brother, in the mean time."

"Don't worry, I will." Sakura blushed - why was she even blushing, she asked herself - and got back to Luke, who was at the skiff with Artoo, ready to take off for Ben Kenobi's old hut, where he had hidden his starfighter. "Ready to leave this ball of sand forever?"

"Yes," she nodded, but then noticed his faraway gaze and asked: "What's wrong?"

"Just thinking about this place." he tore his gaze away from the direction he was looking towards - towards the Great Scar, where he's first found Sakura. "I grew up here. I had always dreamed of leaving this place forever, because my ambition was too big - I never thought I'd leave and become 'Hero of the Rebellion' because my aunt and uncle, the people who had been like parents to me, would be murdered by the Stormtroopers...I thought I had got nothing left to go back to at the time. And then I came back. Twice. Once, because I had lost my path...it was my first confrontation with Boba Fett. The second time - it was to rescue Han, and - in the over six months I was here, I learned the true value of humility again, and I have the Desert to thank for that.

"And then, you came around. Young, lost, headstrong, alien - just like me. We make an interesting pair, Sakura Haruno, even if your heart belongs to someone else." And with that, they drove off, Sakura sitting in a corner as Luke drove, mulling about his last words. He knew she loved Sasuke, and didn't seem to mind - yet his words cast some doubt on his true feelings for her.

Not to mention she herself had come to doubt her feelings towards Sasuke and Naruto, since the mission to Orochimaru's hideout.

She cast a look at Tattooine's setting suns. What did it matter, to them, the internal battle Luke's words had just unleashed into her? For a moment, she wished to be just like them...

 **D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

 **Yes, yes, I know, I should have updated sooner, or by now learned the important lesson that is: "Don't start more stories than you can keep up with." But I haven't. So I'm still posting this chapter, even if it isn't even more than half an hour into the _Star Wars: Return of the Jedi movie._**


	5. Chapter 5

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

 **Hello and welcome to yet another chapter of We've Had A Good Time, people of . I'm happy to announce you that the chapter you're reading right now, and all those that will come next, is the product of of a collaboration with fellow writer TheDragonPrinces, who wrote most of it and to whom I hereby lend the stage to speak...**

 **Dragon: *looks over shoulder, slurps noodle* Uh...hi? *blinks, turns to D, whispering loud enough for the audience to hear* You didn't tell me I had to do a speech!**

 **D: Hey, mate, it's your chapter by a good chunk of the word-o-meter. I walked the walk for the half of my talk, now it's your moment to speak so go on 'cause trust me y'aint no pipsqueak.**

 **Dragon:...**

 **D: ...Yeah, probably shouldn't have done that. Better get out before Eminem tries to kill me for wasting the audience's time with such a crappy rhyme.**

 **Dragon: *scrambles up, turns to audience, bows* I hope you will enjoy the chapter, we tried our best! Now...**

 **...On with the story, then!**

 **Chapter Five: Dagobah**

 _Dagobah. Duh. -.-"_

"Why that look? So old must I look to young eyes?" despite the tone of the question being amused, Sakura immediately scrambled up on the defensive: "What? Oh, no, absolutely not, Master Yoda."

The former Jedi Grand Master frowned and wacked her upside the head with his gimer stick - and Kami did he hit almost as hard as Tsunade even for such a little guy - and chuckled, in that weird speech pattern of his: "When 900 years pass seen you will have, look so nice you will not."

Then he turned to Luke, as Sakura nursed her throbbing head, and said: "Great power in your companion I sense, but also great turmoil and great confusion. Take care of her, young Skywalker."

"I will." Luke nodded, and unconsciously flashed a shy smile at Sakura, but then looked back at Yoda in embarassment as Sakura noticed. "Master Yoda, I need you to complete my training."

"Do it, I wish I could." the diminutive Jedi sighed, sounding older and wearier than he'd ever been, and approached his little bed. "Old I am, and nothing mote to teach you I have."

"So, I am a Jedi." Luke spoke almost as if he'd just realized it, but Yoda coughed and climbed on his small bed. "Not...yet...face Vader you still have to...and kill him."

"Why?" Luke questioned, his composure faltering momentarely: "Why do I have to kill my own father?"

"So...told you, he has." Yoda coughed again, and Luke pulled the blankets over him, adjusting the pillow so he'd be more comfortably, and Sakura noticed Yoda's sad smile, as if it was the first time someone had showed him a gesture of affection. "Is it so bad that I know the truth?" Luke questioned, looking at his old teacher in the eye. "Not ready yet you were. Unprepared." Yoda sighed, and Luke looked down at his cybernetical right hand. "Yeah. I know."

"Luke..." Yoda coughed, and Luke fretted to his side. "When gone will I am...the Last of the Jedi you will be. Pass on...what you have learned."

"I will." Luke promised, and Sakura tried not to imagine what it was like to be the last of your kin - she'd seen that pain too often, in Tsunade's eyes, in Naruto's or...in Sasuke's.

"Luke..." Yoda called once again, his voice raspy as Death approached to take him away. "There's...something...I must...tell...you...there...there is...another...Skywal...ker..."

And with that shocking revelation, Yoda's head fell on his pillow, and just...disappeared.

Along with the rest of his body.

"Is he...Is he dead?" Sakura dared to ask, and Luke sighed: "Strong thanks to the Force he was...but not so strong. No one is. No one." he bowed his head down and laid it on the now-empty bed. Sakura opted to remain outside. Luke deserved to grieve in peace.

As she stepped in the cold breeze of the night, her thoughts once again drifting to her teammates. Would they be alright, fighting the Ten-Tails? Has the fight even continued after her sudden departure? And when they'd won - well, more likely when, not if, because Naruto would find a way like a he always did - would they mourn her? Would they try looking for her? Would they even care? Would Sasuke care? And what about-

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a throat being cleared to her right.

Startled, she jumped up while simultaneously taking out a Kunai. She warily eyed the... person? Ghost? Apparition? Hallucination? Whatever he was, he seemed... not unfriendly. Still, a careless ninja is a dead ninja, so she kept her guard up.

"Who are you?" She asked briskly.

"I am Obi-Wan Kenobi, once a Jedi Knight. And yourself?" The see-through man asked in return. He made no move towards her, nor did he do more than give her weapon a short glance before focusing on her face.

"Sakura Haruno, Jounin of Konohagakure." She answered, slowly lowering her Kunai. She recognized the man from Luke's memories, except most of his life Luke knew him as old Ben. How was he here, though? Wasn't he dead? Killed on a mission in space while distracting Darth Vader so that Luke and the others could escape?

"Your thoughts betray you, young one, and you are right... I am dead, indeed." Obi-Wan's ghost answered her unspoken question.

"Stay out of my head, it would be much appreciated." She said firmly, crossing her arms in front of her chest with a frown.

"Of course, my apologies. I have never heard of a Konohagakure system. Where is it located?" Obi-Wan asked curiously.

"Its not a system, it's a village. During a... during a...energy discharge, I was... transported, somehow, from my universe to this one. Luke found me in the desert, and told me about the war and everything." Sakura explained with a sigh, thoughts once again drifting to her home.

"I see. You've had quite the adventure then, Sakura."

"Yeah, you sure could say that..." she said, before once more sitting doen on the fallen log behind her. "...I... don't suppose you know of a way that could send me back home... do you?"

"No, I'm afraid not. I have never encountered anything quite like your story before. But rest assured, I will be thinking on it after you and Luke leave to once more continue on your journey. Now, would you mind telling about the strange energy that flows through your veins?" Obi-Wan said kindly, taking a ghostly seat beside her.

"You mean my Chakra?" Sakura asked in surprise.

"Chakra? Is that what it is called?" Obi-Wan repeats curiously. "From what I can sense, it is... almost like you have both the light and the dark side of the Force, and yet... and yet it feels so different ... if I were to compare it to anything, I'd have to say the steady solidity of the earth beneath our feet, or the soothing calm of streaming water... yet at the same time it feels mobile like an avalanche, and awe inspiring like a stormy sea... I honestly cannot decide whether I feel one or the other. It's like a perfect combination of the Living Force (thanks to which I'm able to talk with you), the energy of every living being, and the Cosmic (or Unifying Force), that binds us all together. Since you fit rather haphazardly into this logic, however, you are appallingly easy to detect."

"I... I'm surprised... no one has ever been able to tell my Chakra Natures just by meeting me before. But yeah, my affinities are Earth and Water Release, and I am capable of both Yin Release, which is also known as Dark Release, and Yang, or Light, Release. Yin and Yang are opposites, yet both are half of a whole... I myself can't, but I know at least one Shinobi who can utilize Yin-Yang Release, which, as the name might suggest, combines both the Yin Release And the Yang Release." Sakura explains, surprising herself with her forthrightness.

"And... you do not feel effected by this... Yin Release?" Obi-Wan asked uncertainly.

"No, it is not influential like the Dark side of the Force is based on what Luke told me. Nor is it fueled by anger or hate. Chakra is molded from a combination of spiritual and physical energy, like your Force has respectively a Cosmic and Living aspect. Some Shinobi, known as Sages, also add nature energy to the mix, increasing the power of their techniques...but that's too long to explain." she dismissed the subject. The old man, despite his grandfatherly figure, gave the impression that he was a lab attendant trying to dissect her to discover every little peculiarity. "But I want to know something myself, Kenobi."

"Of course."

"Thanks, I'll be as brief as possible, then - So." she smiled, then took a long breath and there it went. "WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU EVER TELL LUKE THAT HIS FATHER WAS VADER, BAKA?! HAVE YOU REALLY GOT ANY IDEA OF HOW HARD THIS THING HAS HIT HIM?!"

Sakura's angry outbursts were something you DEFINITELY did not wish to be around. And that, even if it may sound strange, applied to immortal Force Ghosts like Ben Kenobi, too.

"Yes, I'd like to know that too." Luke said, appearing behind them. Then, glaring at Kenobi, he spat: "You wanted me to kill my own father."

"The man you refer to as your father ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader when the Emperor made him turn on his loved ones." Kenobi sighed wearyly (odd, for a ghost), and sat on a large, fallen tree. "I was young and unprepared, but I thought I'd be able to train your father as good as Yoda would have. I even tried to make him see reason when he turned and slaughtered every Jedi down to the Temple younglings. But he refused to - and now he's more machine than man."

"And you want me to kill a _cripple_?! You sick bastard -"

"He killed children - "

"I did, too!" Luke shocked his old teacher with this statement. "I'm a starfighter pilot - the one who can make the most mistakes on the battlefield, especially when you're a young and arrogant teenagers flying through a city's skyline while in a dogfight with a squadron TIE bombers on your tail. You think I'm proud of it?! You think _he_ is proud of it?'"

"He's a Sith-" Obi-Wan animately replied, and Luke deadpanned, shrugging: "So what?"

"'So what'?" Kenobi whispered, because he was _that_ close to losing his cool, and Luke replied. "I've read your diary, Old Ben. You fell in love with a Dark Jedi-slash-Nightsister-slash-assassin named Asaji Ventress. And there's still good in Vader."

"I never felt any light in him."

"I ain't talking about light, I'm talking about _good. I have felt it."_ Luke said, and then, not liking Kenobi's silence, changed the subject. "Yoda told me of another Skywalker. What else have you hidden from me for all these years, Ben?"

At this, the old man sighed deeply. "You and your sister were separated at birth to protect you from the Emperor's plans. You were given to your uncles on Tattooine - and your sister was given to the House of Organa."

"Then Leia...Leia is my sister!" Luke realized, and then looked like he'd just had a heart attack. "Oh kriff...oh, _kriff."_

"What? What is it?"

"I just realized I had sex with my own sister." Luke shakyly answered, and pulled up his index and middle finger. "Twice."

And right then, even if the rules of being dead (or rather, one with the Force) prevented Force Ghosts from having heart attacks...somehow Ben Kenobi managed to get around that rule.

 **-Line Break-**

"All things considered, that went well." Sakura dryly remarked as they entered hyperspace, and Luke sighed. "Yeah, I don't think he'll be talking to us anytime soon. But, at least, I know there's hope for the Galaxy if...if I fail my mission, and that hope is Leia, just like I always thought."

"You won't fail. I'll be there to help you, remember?" Sakura put her hand over his, but quickly retracted it when Luke noticed. But the pilot just squeezed it in gratitude. "Thanks, Sakura. And...I'm sorry we weren't able to find a way back home for you. "

"It's not your fault." Sakura replied, squeezing back, and Luke smiled shyly. "To tell you the truth, it would hurt me to see you go?"

"It would?..." Sakura repeated, not sure she'd heard right, and Luke sighed. "I have loved many women in the past...but they...they all ended up dead, or leaving. Nakari Kelen, Camie...Shira Brie...Prithi, Leia...everyone who gets too close to me ends up getting hurt. I don't want you to get hurt too, Sakura."

Sakura did not answer to that silent admission. The weight of the impossibility of a return home had just started to sink in. What did she have to go back home to? She had a war to fight, she had her friends, she had Naruto, she had Sasuke...but she knew that Kaguya was not invincible, and that those two bakas would manage to finally put apart their rivalry to defeat her...besides, Naruto had now Hinata (she silently thanked Kami for having finally managed to make that orange baka realize Hinata's feelings for him), and Sasuke...Sasuke never really had any feelings for her.

That was the hard truth, the one she'd always tried to hide from her sight.

And now here she was, cramped up in the cockpit of a starfighter, basically sitting on the lap of an older man who had let his feelings slip out of his cool. Now she was stranded in his universe, with no chance of ever getting back home. She'd decided to fight his war as soon she'd ended up in his home, even if he had took her in without asking for anything in return. Yet he'd been as much as stranded as her...and she'd given him the will to go on. She brought this man back to life.

And the name of this man was Luke Skywalker.

 **D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

 **And here it is, another small step for this story...but a helluva job even for the combined energies of two authors. God if I'm spent...I leave the microphone - sorry, the keyboard, to my colleague, TheDragonPrinces...**

 **Dragon: keys, mike, I'm pretty sure they're the same thing here on Anyway, have a good nap, Mr. D.! *covers him with a blanket, then turns to audience* Dear audience, thank you for reading, don't forget to take out the trash, and if you got cockroaches in your house then for the love of everything that's holy in this life, _please_ call the exterminators-**

 **D: DALEKS?! WHERE?! RUN, YO FOOLS! THE END IS NIGH, AND WE AIN'T GOT NO HIGH! (SAVE FOR THAT RING, ON THAT TRUNCHEON THING!) *quote-unquote Joe Strummer, then falls down unconscious***

 **Dragon: *looks at him weirdly, then shrugs and resumes speaking* Must be a pop culture overdose. Anyway, you got the memo. Thanks for reading, and see you next time! *waves***


	6. Chapter 6

**D. The Wanderer's Author Rant**

 **D: Man, how I'm aching for Star Wars VIII to come out right now...what about you, Dragon?**

 **Dragon: Yeah, I know what you mean, D-man. But I'm having more of an ache with the week-long wait for the Walking Dead episodes myself! Call me weird, but I love watching Daryl and the others bashing thosezombie skulls to itty pieces. And now...**

 **...On with the Story, then!**

 **Chapter Six: Endor**

 _The hangar bay of the capital ship_ Home One, _near Sullust..._

"Luke!" a familiar Corellian accent called, and the Tattooine native slowly lifted himself out of the cockpit, searching for the source of the voice. "Wedge!" he shouted himself as he recognized the older man, and the two pilots fell into a (manly) hug. "You little desert son of a Hutt, where in the Nine Hells had you gone? The Princess was the most tight-lipped of all, and for once, _both_ Lando and Han agreed with her on letting us know squat about your whereabouts. Me and the guys were all worried sick."

"Ah, nonsense. Just had to take care of some unfinished businness." Luke waved it off, taking off his helmet...only for Sakura to choose that one moment to jump off the X-wing. And it took Wedge only one look to catch up. "Unfinished business, eh? Lucky bastard."

"That's not what -"

"Hey, folks!" Wedge shouted out to the whole hanger before Luke could finish the sentence. "Luke's got a girlfriend!"

"Lucky bastard."

"Good for him."

"Force, I really hope she doesn't end up like the last one!"

"She isn't - ah for Force's sake." Luke groaned, and then turned to Sakura. "Sakura Haruno, meet Red Squadron. In the order in which they spoke, Wedge Antilles, Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian, and Wes Janson."

Really girl, you don't wanna end up like the last one." Wes leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, and Sakura groaned: "I'm not - oh for Kami's sake. What happened to the 'last one'?"

"Um - kinda fell for Han?" Hobbie mock-guessed, and Luke covered his face with his hands in shame. "C'mon, guys, must you always remind me of when Leia kissed me? What is it, today's the 'let's all take a bite outta Luke' day?"

"Got that right, Commander." Tycho slung his arm over Luke's shoulders, being noticeably taller. "And no, we ain't gonna let it go that you're the first of the only two lucky guys to have had sex with _Leia Kriffin' Organa_."

"You're lucky then you're reminding me and not her of this fact, Tycho." Luke then smirked, counterattacking. "'Cause she's kinda, you know, your Queen, and knowing Leia like I know her, she'd have you executed."

"Ooh, burn!" Wes popped up again. "Ladies and gents, the great Return of the Jedi who Strikes Back with A reNewed Hope against his older wingmates!"

"Really, Wes, I think you should leave it, you could kinda be the next one to fall under fire from the Jedi's Revenge." Hobbie leaned on his shorter counterpart's shoulder, but Wes Janson declared: "Nuh huh. Not gonna happen till Luke really introduces us to his girl."

"She ain't my girl and she ain't your type, Wes. She's pretty much capable of handing us our collective asses, since she pretty much did the same to _Boba Fett_."

"Got that, Wes?" Wedge laughed heartily, and slapped Janson on the shoulder as Luke and Sakura managed to sneak out of the room. "Better stick to _Playboy_ paper girls."

"Ah ah. Very funny, Wedge."

 **-Line Break-**

"You okay?" Luke asked Sakura, having felt her sadness through the Force eve if she hid it well physically. Sakura seemed to be shaken out of a memory and wiped something out of her eye: "No, it's just that...man, those guys reminded me way too much of the Konoha Eleven."

"Who?"

"Ah, my graduating class at the Academy...morons like Kiba, Shikamaru, Naruto...heck, even Sai, and Sasuke...those guys reminded me of them. Always arguing, always making fun of each other just to..."

"Red Squadron is like that, yeah. But...it's mostly a front. People like Wedge, Tycho, heck, even Wes and Hobbie...they were all here before me...you have no idea how many friends, comrades, brothers they lost in the battle in which I became one of them. And then I blew up the Death Star, and a countless people all across the Galaxy shared that same sorrow, that same loss, with the members of Red Squadron." Luke rambled. "We're the best aces in the whole of the Rebel Fleet...the most infamous pilots in the Galaxy, among the most wanted people of the Empire. We've blown up more Imperials than we can count, and we know that. We've killed tons of enemy soldiers, knowing that they'd have done just the same because killing people's our job. We are those with the highest number of deaths on our conscience...we envy those that have a family to go back to, because we aren't capable of creating our own. And so we keep flying, because it's all we'd ever dreamed of doing when we were kids. And so we keep killing, because it's become the only other thing we're good at. And so we keep making fun of each other, because it's the only way we're able to be a family to each other. We're the roguest of the rogues...they call us Rogue Squadron, and if you ask any of us, they'll tell ya they're done proud of this name."

"I understand." Sakura nodded, her mind taken off from her friends back in her home Universe, but a cold voics sent a chill up her spine: "Oh, _do_ you?"

It was Wedge.

And gone was the cheerful demeanor, or the easygoing air. He was every inch the dead-serious and battle-hardened soldier, the thousand-yard stare of the killer in his flinty black eyes. "Tell me, Sakura Haruno. Have you ever been forced to kill the people you'd been friends with as a kid, eh, to train your gun on a friend? Have you ever had to shoot at soldiers whom hailed rom your own planet, shared your beliefs, or ate the same food under the same Sun, but had the fatal flaw of being on the wrong side of a dogfight? Or was ever your whole planet, your whole people, your whole culture, your whole _world, completely erased_ with a single shot by a moon-sized space station, like what happened to Tycho?"

Sakura remained silent. No, her experience couldn't compare. She'd never even killed anyone in her life, apart the members of the Akatsuki she'd fought with - and she'd come to hate them so much she didn't feel a thing.

"I thought so." Wedge continued, his tone hard and cold. "You came along with Luke and that is enough for me to trust you. Enough for any of us Rogues to trust you. But even if you have our trust, that doesn't mean you can insult us by telling us you understamd what we feel, _because you don't._ "

And with that, he turned to leave, but was stopped by Sakura's voice, which had become as hard as his. "You're right. I can't understand and I can't compare. But I sure as Hell can feel the same way, Wedge Antilles. I had to fight against enemies who haunted me to the core, enemies who turned my friends into monsters, enemies who'd frighten even you. I am stuck here, in this unfamiliar Universe, and have no way of going back home, no way to know if they're still alive or if the war we were fighting has killed them all. So don't say I'm insulting you, because _you_ are insulting _me_ just as much!"

Sakura was breathing hard now, her whole frame shaking with anger; Luke tried to calm her down by putting his hands on her shoulders from behind, but the teenager did not stop shaking, and kept staring at Wedge's back.

Then, at the last moment, Wedge turned, flashing Sakura a smile: "You got spunk kid; you got the bite, I gotta hand that to ya. Better keep her close, Luke."

And then, right in front of the astonished pair, he turned back and left, saying casually: "Oh, by the way, Luke, you're going the wrong way: meeting room's this way."

"Aw, shit, you're right. Thanks, man." Luke realized, and he and Sakura immediately dashed the right way, with Sakura grumbling: "Why does everyone think we're a couple?"

"Maybe for my infamous dating history." Luke chuckled, then his face grew distant. "But I know how much you'd love to prove them wrong."

Would she?

Sakura herself didn't know the answer to this question. She had nowhere to go back to, after all, and no one. No Naruto. No Sasuke. No one.

Would she, indeed?

 **-Line Break-**

Luckily, Sakura and Luke arrived just in time at the Rebel Base to hear the tail end of Chewie and Lea volunteering to join Han on his mission. Naturally, there was only one thing to be said.

"I'm with you too." Luke said as he entered the room, the pinkette on his heels.

"And there's no way I'm staying behind either, so that makes five of us, including you yourself, Solo-san." Sakura said casually, plopping herself down in between the Wookie and the newly appointed General while Luke and Leia hugged it out.

"Well, then I think this is gonna be the smoothest ride ever." Solo smirked...not knowing how wrong he was going to be.

(Hey! What do you mean by that?)

Well, for starters, one fourth wall-break later, it was rather small inside of the Empirial ship, and Chewbacca complained rather loudly, while Han sat in the pilot's seat grumbling. "No, I don't think the Empire had Wookies in mind when they built her, Chewie." Han said, trying not to think of his beloved Millenium Falcon while starting up the ship. Only to get utterly distracted when he looked up and saw said ship through the window. Her sleek form, her comfortable cockpit, her spa-

"Hey, you awake?" Leia asked, startling Han back to the present.

"Yeah, I just got a funny feeling. Like I'm not gonna see her again." he answers, nodding towards the Falcon. Chewbacca made a sound of agreement.

"C'mon General, let's move."

"Great. Chewie, let's see what this piece of junk can do. Ready, everybody?"

"All set." Luke answered while strapping himself in next to where Sakura had already installed herself with some minor difficulty after they boarded the ship.

"bwoopbeeee woopweep." R2-D2 voiced out enthusiastically.

"Here we go again." C3PO said solemnly. If he weren't a robot, he would've sighed.

As the small, stolen Lambda-class ship flew out of the main ship and entered hyper space, elsewhere in the Galaxy, a meeting of a darker kind took place.

"What is thy bidding, my Master?" the warped voice of Darth Vader sounded through the barely lit room.

"Send the fleet to the far side of Endor." Darth Sidious hissed out. "There it will stay... untill called for."

"What of the reports of the Rebel Fleet massing near Sullust?" Vader questioned.

"It is of no concern. Soon, the Rebellion will be crushed and young Skywalker will be one of us." Sidious practically spat out before giving a sardonic smile. "Your work here is finished, my friend."

"And what of the strange new ally the Rebels seem to have gained?"

"Ah, I see you have received word from Fett. But don't worry, Lord Vader, she fits perfectly into the equation...we'll have our uses for her."

 **Dun dun dunn! There goes the CLIFFHANGER!**

 **The Author(s)' Rant**

 **D: And there it goes, friend and foes, and I'm not as tired as last time when I was fagged, but I feel like needin' blood donors so please my friend you do the honors and begin the rant 'cause I feel worse than a blackout-ed power plant and you deserve the screen time as much as this I know's a crappy rhyme.**

 **Dragon: Dude, cut it out. You just aren't cut for the rapper life.**

 **D: Aww...**

 **Dragon: Anyway. *turns to audience, gives them a bright smile* We'd love to know your ideas on the story so far, as well as possible future events, epic battles, alliances, editing mistakes ('cause we're not omniscient, even if we're the authors) and other things you'd like to see. Arigatou (thanks in Japanese) for reading! *smiles brightly, revealing a vicious row of fangs* Bye bye Miss American Pie! Have a good day everyone, and don't forget to live your life!**

 **D: You call my rhyme dumb (which I admit it is, and I swear I'll stop) and then you sing American Pie? At least I hope it ain't Madonna's version...**


	7. Chapter 7

**The Authors' Rant**

 **D: After a long, perilious voyage undertaken to reclaim the Sense and Sensibility (and Sea Monsters) that had characterized the previous chapters, I can hereby announce you that...**

 **Dragon: That what? The author is lazy**

 **D: Aw, come on! I did most of the dirty work this time around, and it was Hell for me! Don't you have any pity for a poor writer-blocked writer?**

 **Dragon: Who doesn't have writer's block? And what's pity? Is it edible?**

 **D: ...Okay, I guess my Friday drama classes aren't working. I better get...**

 **...On with the Story, then!**

 **Chapter Seven: Don't Surrender**

 _Endor, The night before the battle at the shield generator..._

The last few hours would have been nearly comical, for our heroes, had they not realized they'd just been saved from fuzzy, man-eating, so-cute-they're-murderous teddy bears by _**See-KRIFFIN'-Threepio**_.

Well, it was more like Luke using the Force to make the Ewoks think Goldenrod was a God, but the Rebels were thankful no one else had been there, especially with a camera. Plus, they'd managed to convince the Ewoks into helping them take down the Death Star II's shield generator that the Imps had built on the planet, so all was well.

Or was it?

 **-Line Break-**

"What's wrong, Luke?" Sakura asked the man, who seemed to be just standing silently on one of the bridges between the various Ewok threehouses.

"Vader's here. I could feel the conflict radiating from him everywhere." the Jedi murmured, turning at her with a tired but resolute gaze. "I have to confront him. This way, I'll be able to keep him away from you and the strike team."

He tried to turn back, but Sakura grabbed his wrist. "Don't. It's suicide, and you know it."

"I do, but...I can feel there's still a spark of good in him. I have to turn him. I have to try."

"Luke..."

"Please, Sakura. He's my father. I have to try." he pleaded, and Sakura bit her lip, eyes downcast. "I know how you feel, Luke. I...I tried the same thing, with someone I knew. For years. It...it never worked, and when Naruto got his head on it too...it was even worse. They almost died...both of them."

"What was his name?" Luke asked, and Sakura murmured: "Sasuke Uchiha. I used to love him, but...he never cared."

"I'm sorry." Luke let her lean her head on his chest, caressing her soft, pink hair. It was a moment of intimacy they both needed, and neither of them questioned it.

"I thought you were like Naruto, when I first met you...but no. You're hurting more deeply than him. You don't know if it's gonna work, or if it's the right thing to do...yet..."

"Yet I have to try."

"Do or do not, you said. There's no try." Sakura smiled playfully, despite the moment, and Luke chuckled. "Yeah."

Then, after a long pause: "Sakura, I'm sure you know what my feelings are for you."

The girl stiffened.

"I just don't want you to get hurt."

"Me either. But both of us are no strangers to pain, are we?"

They stayed like that for a long time, before Sakura finally looked up to him, emerald meeting sky.

"Luke...All this time, I've tried to ignore your feelings on me, because I was so desperate for a way back home that I thought getting attached to you would only tear you apart when I'd go away. But, facts are, you've gotten attached, and...I've got attached too, you see."

"So you..."

"Yes." a soft blush crept into her cheeks, and unconsciously, she smiled. Luke, on his part, let out a choked sound, halfway between a sob and joyous laughter, and hugged her close in the spur of the moment, Sakura burying her face in the crook of his neck.

"We're doing this together." she said firmly despite the tears threathening to spill from her eyes, and Luke nodded back, inches away from crying himself as well. "Together."

They'd have kept holding each other like that forever...

...if not for Leia's terribly untimely interruption.

"There you are, lovebirds." she smirked playfully at them, but her smile fell when she saw the tears.

"What's wrong?"

"We...we're going to give ourselves up. We need to get on board the Death Star, and this is the only way." Sakura managed to tell her, but the news did nothing except deepen her shock, and thus Luke decided to drop the bombshell. "Leia...Vader's here."

"You sensed him?"

"Yes...and this is my only chance to confront him. To turn him." he explained, and Leia's glare became icy. "I see no reason to do that. It'd be much better to blow that MONSTER up with Palpatine and the whole Death Star."

Luke paused at the harsh tone, unsure of how to say it. "Leia, do you remember Bespin?"

"Of course," Leia nodded gravely, Han's haunting screams of pain echoing through her mind. Luke looked down to his mechanic hand, and then back at her: "Vader told me something, that day. He told me he didn't kill my father. He told me he WAS my father."

Leia paled.

"And you believed him?"

"I sensed it was the truth. And Master Yoda confirmed it." Luke stated, deciding it was best to be blunt about this. "He told me to come with him...and behind the facade of power and evil I saw the sheer desperation of a cripple with nothing to lose but a son he didn't even know."

"Luke, you can't be serious -" Leia began, but Luke interrupted her. "Leia. There's more."

"More?"

"More. Listen, if I...if we fail, you're the only hope left for the Alliance."

"What are you talking about, Luke?" Leia chuckled mirthlessly, looking away, her dark eyes tinted with sadness. "You have powers which I am envious of and unable to comprehend. You're a Jedi."

"One day, you could be one too." Luke smiled gently, and took her hand, and placed it over her heart. "The Force is strong in my family. I have it. My Father has it. And...my sister has it."

Suffice to say it was the first time in the whole history of the Rebellion that anyone saw Leia Organa remain shell-shocked to this extent. "I...I'm your sister?"

"Yes. I've discovered it myself just a week ago. From Master Yoda."

"So that means Vader is..."

"Yes. Let's face it, Leia. They used us. They all used us." Luke replied bitterly. "Bail Organa, Obi-Wan Kenobi. We admired them. They loved us. But still, to them we were nothing more than mere pawns to use against the Empire. Beloved pawns, sure..."

"...But still pawns on a board." Leia finished hollowly, the weight of that knowledge crushing her heart from the inside, finally allowing her newfound brother to hug her. "Then, Luke, if you go..."

"You won't be alone. Han will be there for you, and...I'll always stay with you. You'll just have to learn to see me." the two at last broke what probably was the last hug of their lives, and Leia turned to Sakura with a firm and resolute gaze, hardened brown eyes devoid of the tears that had filled them just moments before. This was General Leia Organa speaking, Survivor of Alderaan and Leader of the Rebellion. The Ice Queen herself. "I want you to promise me you'll take care of him."

"I will." Sakura replied, the readiness and sharpness of a soldier. "Until my last breath."

Leia nodded, and as the two moved to depart, she let her vulnerability slip through her icy mask. "Luke...I...I don't know if I'm ever going to accept what you told me...It's just I can't picture the man who held my arms behind my back as Alderaan burned being the same as the hero of the Clone War."

"It's life." it was Sakura who replied, looking at the older woman with understanding. "I know it sounds corny and over-used, but it's something I've experienced firsthand. Life changes everyone, and sometimes those we think to be the worst monsters reveal the misunderstood good in them, and those we think to be the greatest heroes...those we admire...they reveal themselves to be the real monsters."

Leia could only nod, lips tightly pressed together, and then she turned at Luke. "Luke, before you go, I think I may have a memory of our mother."

"You do?" Luke's attention spiked up at those words - he had no recollection at all of their real mother. And what little he had of their father weren't good memories.

"Yes. I remember this vision I had when I went to Naboo with Eevaan Verlaine, of this woman... she was so beatiful, yet so sad... I... I think she was a queen..." she told him, and trailed off as her memory tried to recapture those fleeting sensations. "...I think I saw her through the Force, Luke. She... she felt so much like you."

Luke nodded, in understanding and gratitude. "Thanks, Leia."

And then the two set off, but a gruff whisper from the shadows momentarely froze them on the spot."Leavin' the party so soon, kid?"

"Han?" Luke asked, seeing the scruffy outline of his best friend, leaning back-first on the bark of the tree. "How... how much did you hear?"

"Just everythin'." Han shrugged, and Luke's face tightened. Surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly), however, Han was unfazed. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. After all, who am I to judge? Who is anyone to judge?"

"Thanks, Han. And...you'll take care of Leia, won't ya?" Luke nodded, humbled, and Sakura squeezed his hand. "We should go. The Sun will rise soon."

"Of course. And...May the Force be with you." Han nodded at them, and then, as they disappeared in the darkness, whispered: "You'll need it".

With those words he saluted them (for they were about to rock), and the two young warriors made their way through the foliage, up to the base of a familiar Sith Lord who was patiently waiting for them.

 **-Line Break-**

"Sir, these two are Rebels who have surrendered themselves to our forces." the security officer managed to state with a voice steely enough not to let the imposing shadow in the corner know how intimidated he was by his mere presence and mechanical breathing.

For Darth Vader, the Executioner of the Empire, Dark Lord of the Sith, would always know.

He did not feel fear. He _commanded_ fear. And respect.

You could be a cadet stormtrooper coming from a backwater mudhole like Tattooine or Naar Shadda, you could be a high-ranking officer born from one of the wealthiest Coruscanti families, to Vader it was all the same. And if you didn't give him those two things he commanded...well, you could only hope that reincarnation was something more than just a belief.

There were those who said that Vader was intimidated by no one. Not even the Emperor. There were those that said that the Emperor was just a puppet he manipulated. There were those who knew better and thus had the intelligence to keep their mouth shut.

And to which category belonged Jaan Semyurr, a lowly security officer whom only duty in this moment was to hand Vader the weapons of two rebels who had approached (and surrendered) to a random patrol?

Frankly, he didn't care. And Vader sure as in the Nine Corellian Hells didn't, either.

Thus when Vader ordered to leave him alone with the two rebels, both Semyurr and the patrol accompanying him were more than happy to oblige.

And so the Dark Lord was left alone, his mechanical breathing being the only sound that could be heard, aside from those of the forest.

"So you have indeed come. Both of you."

Silence.

"Sakura Haruno. We finally meet, child." this time, the Dark Lord's statement wasn't met by silence. Rather, by a surprised gasp coming from the lips of the aforementioned kunoichi. "How do you know my name?"

"Boba Fett was greatly impressed by your performance on Tattooine. Suffice to say it impressed even me...and if his condition had permitted him to join us, you'd have seen for yourself how much of a grudge he's able to hold when someone makes _that_ kind of impression on him."

"Sorry to hear that." Sakura sarcastically snapped, as Vader ignited Luke's lightsaber and gave it a few swings to try it out. Almost immediately, however, the Sith Lord seemed to be pleased with the weapon, and held it for Luke to see. "A true Jedi weapon. I see you've finally built your own. You're a true Jedi Knight now."

"Not yet." came Luke's cold reply and, strange as it may sound, the hint of a sneer permeated Vader's next few words. "Of course. Obi-Wan and Yoda will surely have already told you of what your 'final test' will consist, haven't they?"

"It needn't come to that, Father." Luke staunchely answered. "If you'd just remember who you were - if you'd just remember Anakin Skywalker - you could finally come free from the Emperor's shadow. You could be free. You could be able to do something you've desired since you were a child slave on Tattooine - something you never really managed to do, neither by becoming a Jedi nor by becoming a Sith. "

Something stirred inside Vader at those words. He had not expected the boy to have such knowledge of his past. "If you ever knew anything about my chains, you'd understand why I can't break free of them." Once a slave, always a slave. "And if you knew anything about the reason I turned to the Dark Side...but you can't understand." he knew he spoke the truth. But then he felt the strange connection between Sakura and Luke. "Or maybe...can you?"

"I think I'm getting the idea that I can." Luke realized, and Vader ominously turned to Sakura, effortlessly returning an obscure, giant boogeyman. "You have not spoken much, yet."

"That's because I don't have any words to explain how much I downright pity you right now." Sakura's frost was back in place, and the Sith knew she knew, too.

"You don't know nothing of the power of the Dark Side." Vader hollowly replied, beckoning them to enter the elevator. "The Emperor will show you the true ways of the Force. _He_ is your master, now."

 **The Authors' Rant**

 **D: The ultimate battle of the Original Trilogy is near... I can only hope that the Sequel Trilogy can back up enough bite not to disappoint... what do you think, Dragon?**

 **Dragon: Oh, I've seen Episode VII, and it was amazing! I'm pretty sure that *spoiler* is the *spoiler* of *spoiler* and *spoiler*, and that *spoiler* who is *spoiler spoiler* will turn out to be *spoiler's spoiler*! Now how awesome would that be?**

 **D: (Quoting River Song here) Spoilers...(by the way, the title was derived from a Joan Jett song)**


	8. Chapter 8

**The Authors' Rant**

 **D: I guess it's time to bring this story to a close, isn't it, my friend?**

 **Dragon: At the 8th chapter? Feels like we just barely started...**

 **D: Man, I'm really gonna miss it...**

 **Dragon: But what about that sequel you mentioned during our pre-update exchange?**

 **D: Oh yeah, seems almost everything Star Wars-related is doomed to have a sequel, but trust me, it's gonna be great, with ninjas, evil overlords, crossovers, kids, bearded Lukes (and no it ain't a ripoff of TFA), Time Lords...**

 **Dragon: Oi, don't spoil the readers appetite for more Dark Side fighting Sakura goodness!**

 **D: I get it, I get it. But for now, let's just get...**

 **...On with the Story, then!**

 **Chapter Eight: To End All Wars - Fight for Freedom**

 _The Emperor's chambers._

Not one word had been exchanged between the Dark Lord and his captives during all the time it took them to reach the Death Star II. Sakura had been amazed by the sheer size of the space station. Seen from the surface of Endor, it cruelly reminded her of the moon of her homeworld...and just like that moon, the Death Star housed a power capable of destroying her world.

And once again, it was up to a blond knucklehead to save the day.

Only that this particular blond knucklehead had perhaps seen too much to still be considered a knucklehead. And here she was, Sakura Haruno, in love with this farmboy who'd aged too fast and too soon, being led to meet their doom at the ends of a Machiavellian entity by a powerful slave that had never truly managed to break free of his chains, trapped inside an imposing, suffocating suit like a bird with crippled wings that was kept in a golden, bloodied cage.

Could it get any worse?

Luke, by now, looked and felt all too much resigned, for that matter. He could feel the conflict within his father; yet he couldn't act on it, couldn't manage to convince his father to speak to him. And now the elevator had come to a stop, and behold, a mere catwalk away from them, sat Evil himself, dressed in the dusty Sith robes of a nonagenarian politician and warmonger.

"Welcome, my new young Apprentices." Emperor Palpatine leered at them in greeting from his coal-black throne, his yellow eyes glinting with malice, and then turned to the dignitaries that he had been dealing with, coldly dismissing them with a simple: "Leave us."

And as the handcuffs that had been tying the two youths together clattered to the floor, Vader bowed to his Master, presenting him the weapons of the captured enemy. "Ah, the weapon of a Jedi. Just like your father." the Emperor smiled crookedly as he took the lightsaber in his hands, and then frowned in puzzlement as he was offered Sakura's weapons. "Such particular weapons...well, I guess each world has its weapon of choice...but as you will see, none is superior to the Dark Side of the Force."

"Your overconfidence in your abilities is your weakness." Luke stated firmly at the Emperor's boast, but the old man merely glared at him. "And the blind trust you place in your friends is yours."

"It is not a matter of blind trust, but a matter of fact." Sakura resignedly let herself fall on one of the steps of the stairway that led to Palpatine's throne. She was tired. She and Luke had let themselves be captured, if only to take Vader away from the Death Star shield projector that was on Endor. And now there they were, with a mechanical behemoth and a being even more deadly than Kaguya posing as an helpless old man, waiting for the moment in which the whole place would blew up. "Soon we'll all be dead. Both us and you. A big ball of fire in space. A new star in the sky."

"Do you really think so?" the ancient Sith chuckled mockingly, and leaned in to sneer at her from the height of his throne. "Your fleet is approaching this space station, thinking it to be still not fully operational. Allow me to prove them wrong."

It happened all too quickly for anyone to scream. The order of a tyrant, the pressing of a button...and ten thousand voices cried out across space and time, and Luke and Sakura could only watch as what little remained of one of the Alliance's capital ship slowly dispersed into space and a hundred dogfights broke out.

"Yes. Oh, yes." the Emperor cackled as he leaned back into his throne of darkness, while the two youths watched in shock at the horror that unfolded mere miles away from them. "I can feel the anger rising inside you...both of you. You'll make great apprentices..."

"You..." Sakura turned at him, shaking, a cold fury raging inside her green eyes, "You son of a bitch...you murdered them all without even thinking twice about it..."

Palpatine didn't answer, but the sneer didn't go away. Nor did Vader move, or Luke. Sakura was left to scream out her fury in vain, drowned out by the deafening silence. She felt Luke's own anger rising inside him...yet, somehow, he dared not scream it out.

Palpatine felt it too, and was overjoyed: "Good...good. I can feel the anger rising in you, just waiting for your breaking point...use it. Use it against me, I am unarmed and defenseless."

Luke glanced back at the sitting monarch - - no. Not at the sitting monarch, but at the lightsaber that laid in his outstretched palm, inviting, beckoning, taunting...how quick it would be...how easy it would be...and Palpatine knew it all too well.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes! Take it, use it! Strike me down!" the old man taunted, and the pulling of the Dark Side at Luke's mind grew even stronger, unbearable.

 _Why not?_ Luke told himself, and the taunting stopped. _Two can play at this game_ , he thought, glancing at Sakura, who nodded back. She understood. _Make it three_ , Luke smiled, taking off his glove, and thrust his mechanic hand forward...and immediately a bolt of energy slammed itself on the unsuspecting Palpatine, who only had time to dilute the damage to his whole system before Luke grabbed his own lightsaber - - only to be stopped by the big red one. Vader's.

Despite the pain, Palpatine managed to smile viciously. Good. This was what he wanted.

"You sure about that, old man?" a voice stopped him from reclaiming his seat. It was Sakura Haruno, fully equipped with the ninja weaponry that Luke had been smart enough to Force-throw her while he was distracting Palpatine. And she looked **MAD AS HELL.** "Now, about _my_ anger issue..."

Palpatine had only time to create a Force shield with both hands as the first fist impacted. Sakura saw through this strategy, and with a furious trademarked battle cry she sent the old man into the floor, ready to pummel him to death for all it was worth.

 ** _"SHANNAROOOOOOOO!"_**

Blood and teeth flew out of Palpatine's wrinkled mouth as the third punch broke through the shield, and the simple notion that a common girl - - a woman - - had managed to make him bleed drove him crazy, and the Force between him and Sakura exploded, and sent the kunoichi flying.

"You just did the stupidest move you could have ever thought of, you insolent child." Palpatine spat out something along this line (his ruined mouth couldn't utter very comprehensible sentences any more, after all), and took out his own lightsaber, a blood-red glow shimmering maliciously at the edges of the white beam of light that hadn't struck anybody since the Starkiller had tried a suicidal attack to the Death Star I six years prior.

"I could say the same about you, you old bastard." Sakura snarled, charging her fists with chakra, and with a battle cry she lunged at him.

Meanwhile, the duel between Luke and Vader had reached a standstill. "I won't fight you, Father." Luke panted, deactivating his lightsaber as he hopped on a ledge, away from the grim and rather angered reaper. Both of them were equally matched, and had been unable to land any significant blows on their opponent, even if Vader's own hulking form had slowed him down and made him lose his stamina faster than his smaller and more agile son. "I can feel the conflict within you, Father. Please, cease this bullshit, and come with me."

"You still wish to think that we are no different." Vader idly commented despite his as-a-matter-of-fact-rather-quickly-growing inner conflict actually being real. "How foolish of you, son."

"Foolish? In only four years, I have gained a body count far higher than the one it took you twenty-six years to create! We've both done horrible things, does it really matter which side of the fence we belong to?!" Luke shouted, releasing all his pent-up frustration. "You're my father, you told me yourself, so why don't you be the mature one and stop it with this useless farce?! Goddammit, throw that kriffin' mask away already! You are still a slave, you still have a Master! If it was so easy to kill the one who'd been like a father and brother to you for thirteen damn years, why is it so karkin' hard for you to do the same to the one who manipulated you like a puppet for twenty-three?!"

"You know nothing, Luke Skywalker. Nothing of the power of the Dark Side, the power it has on me, the power it will have on you." Vader said at last, and his voice, though still mechanical and powerful, sounded old and tired as he raised his lightsaber high. "But you will. Soon. Soon enough. And when you will, you'll understand."

The lightsaber soared through the catway itself, making it fall in a heap to the ground, taking Luke with it.

Seeing this, the Emperor cackled madly, and Sakura cried out in concern, leaving her side open - - an opportunity the Dark Lord immediately took, blasting her away into the throne staircase, and making the whole structure collapse onto her unconscious form.

Meanwhile, as the Emperor enjoyed his victory, Darth Vader stalked the shadows where he felt his son was hiding, like an imponent, heavy-breathing grim-reaper.

"You cannot hide forever, my son." the Dark Lord stated, and a voice called back from the darkness: "I won't fight you!"

"You can't. It's your destiny, as it was mine." Vader commanded, yet the words came out of his vocoder rather half-heartedly for his liking, as if he was dead tired, as if the weight of his chains had suddenly begun to make itself noticed. "Your feelings betray you. They betray your friends, that girl Sakura, and they betray your...sister?" the Dark Lord felt a rush from surprise and emotion from a heart he'd thought had long since stopped beating, and a rush of fright from his son's aura.

"You have a sister." he stated, somewhat with a tinge of satisfaction in his mechanical voice. "Obi-Wan was wise to hide her...but now that you've betrayed her, if you won't turn, than perhaps she will."

"NOOOOOO!" a primal, desperate cry shook the underlevel, and Luke's green lightsaber slammed itself on Vader with such unexpected and renewed savage raw force that the Sith was forced back, almost tripping due to the violence of the impact. It was Luke who had the high ground, now, raining blow after blow upon his father, forcing his larger opponent to retreat as his son tired him out, determined not to let him win, not to let the darkness win, unaware of how deep within it he himself was actually dwelling.

Suddenly the scales were tipped, and the tables were turned for the last time. The Dark Lord hit his head against a dangling beam, and the uncessant blows from his son forced him on the floor, forcing him to grip the rail with one hand to support himself...until a wrong parry costed him his sword hand.

The smell of burnt circuits and the agonized howls of pain of a cripple were Luke's wake-up call, and as the son stared at his black-gloved prosthetic sword hand, so alike to the one he'd just cut off from the sword arm of his father, and realized how far into the darkness he'd walked, and remembered why, inside that cave on Dagobah, he'd saw his own face inside Darth Vader's helmet.

He'd almost become just like his father.

"And at last, you have fallen from your pedestal, young Skywalker. Your journey Into Darkness is complete." the Emperor laughed evilly as he came, weary and tired yet manic and powerful, to observe the fall of his old apprentice and the rise of a new one. "Now strike your father down and take his place at my side. Time has come."

Luke didn't need to turn to see the taunt in his yellow eyes, or to know that Sakura was still alive, but very much in pain. Gently, as he stood back up, he sent soothing waves of energy to her, to ease her pain and restore her strength.

"Never." he declared, standing defiant as the Emperor's expression turned from gleeful to disappointed. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

"So be it, Jedi." the Emperor enunciated, his words cold and calculated, though spitting out the word 'Jedi' with so much venom you'd have thought it was a curse, all the while raising his hands in a threatening manner. "And you should die a Jedi, just as well. You shall pay your price for your lack of vision. Oh yes, you shall pay."

And right then, bright, bluishly purple lightning erupted from Palpatine's fingers and threw Luke to the ground, with the young Jedi letting out a scream so wild and terrifying, such was the sheer agony it contained, that it shook the walls of the Death Star's insides in a thirty block radius.

Luke gagged for air as the torture stopped, his nerve perceptions completely scrambled. He'd never felt such a dark power before, such a corruption of the Force...it made him want to retch his soul out...but if such a power came from the Force, then with the Force it could be countered...

...But his attempt didn't even last half the half of a minute, and once again, white-hot pain blossomed inside his bones.

"Poor, young fool." the Emperor chided in mock sadness as he briefly stopped the torture, ignoring Sakura, who was weakly trying to climb out of the wreckage, and the conflicting feelings of his servant, once again at his side, focused only on Luke. "Only now, you understand."

And once again, lightning struck (not once but twice).

"Father!" cried Luke as he spasmed on the floor, his body contorted in pain, his face a mask of agony: "Father, help!"

And again the torture stopped, and again the torture restarted, and again the conflict within the Dark Lord raged, a dormant feeling now burning bright again, enraged at having been forgotten and cast away.

Vader turned for a moment at the girl whom his son had brought all the way up to this carnage, and found that very same feeling, for the very same young man, in her emerald green eyes.

The Dark Lord of the Sith then turned to the old man that had once been both his mentor and friend, the same old man that now was no more than the holder of his chains...and in his yellow eyes he found no love, only hatred and malice, pure evil that had never even known of love...

...And in a moment, the decision was made. Even if it would cost him his life, he'd be a slave no more.

Purple lighning rained upon him as he picked up Palpatine with brute, primal strength, but he ignored the pain, ignored the short-circuiting of his suit and prosthetics, ignored the Force exploding in agony inside him, and just focused on carrying out his first true act of defiance, running over to the edge of the bridge like no man wounded as he was would have ever been able to do, the few meters feeling like a thousand miles, and then, with one last pull, the only force acting in him that of desperation, he threw the Emperor down into the abyss of death he'd crafted, inside the very core of the Death Star, a core that burnt hotter than a thousand stars, and smiled painfully, tiredly, happily as the old man, for the first time in his life, cried in fear as he was burnt to space dust, and his very atoms disintegrated, every trace of him vanishing - - every trace but that anguished, frightened scream, which was like an Ode to Joy in Vader's ears.

Wordlessly, tiredly, painfully, Luke moved from the floor to move his father from the edge of the bridge and help him lie down, and Sakura moved in sync with him.

"It's over." Vader rasped, joyfully, and Sakura began to lift him up, noticing the terrible weight of the armor, and that Luke was too tired and injured to do it alone. "Not yet. This place is going to blow up soon. We need to get outta here."

"Then you must...leave me."

"What?! Of course not, you're coming with us!" Luke protested, helping Sakura, and Vader wheezed: "It's no use anyway...this suit...is a life support sys...tem...Palpatine's lightning's broken it...my lungs are too damaged...gonna give out sooner or...later."

"I can help you." Sakura blurted out, hands already glowing with chakra. "I'm a medic. I can heal your lungs enough for you to make it back with us, and then we'll get you all the help you need."

"You are...truly...something...else." A strange sound was heard, surprising, no, stunning in its rarity: Vader was...laughing? "So stubborn...you remind me...of my wife...May the Force let her rest in peace."

"We'll save you, Father, I promise." Luke said, and the words Just like you saved me didn't need to be pronounced for Vader to grasp them, as the soothing waves of Sakura's curative chakra washed upon his withered lungs, breathing new life into the alveoli.

No further words were spared during the long walk back to the hangars, because there was neither need nor energy for those, in the odd trio.

Rushing soldiers and officers alike paid them no mind, too busy being desperate to save their own hides, and just as the Executor slammed into the Death Star's unprotected hull, Vader's personal Lambda-class ship stood in front of them.

"Luke." Vader rasped again, lying on the ship's ramp. "Please...help me take this mask off...it's suffocating...me."

"You can't, your lungs are not fully healed yet, I've only stabilized the damage!" Sakura protested, her medic-nin instincts and natural stubborness kicking in, but her patient was unmovable. "There are...rebreather masks inside the ship...but...please...even if just once...let me look at the world...at you...and at my son...with my own eyes. Please."

The two complied, and though the disconnecting of the whole apparatus took several moments, at last, a face that hadn't seen the sun in twenty years was finally revealed.

The man - - for there was really a man now, under that armor- - was bald, his face pasty white, with a huge scar running from the top of his forehead to the back of his scalp, and another ancient, ugly red wound cut horizontally through his left cheekbone. His skin looked like it had slowly healed from fifth-degree burns, almost as if he'd been dumped inside a pit of molten lava, and his eyes were deep, and dark...but just as sky blue as Luke's.

"You were right, Luke." Vader smiled, as tears blossomed in his eyes. "Tell your sister...you were right, about me."

"You'll tell her yourself. Just wait. It's gonna be alright." Luke smiled, grabbing him again. "Sakura, help me drag him on board."

Minutes later, the small Lambda finally departed the Death Star, inches from its explosion.

"Sakura..." Vader addressed his medic as she ran comforting tendrils of healing chakra over his old wounds, and the battle was won, behind their backs. "I know so little of you, but...there's only one thing I really want, or should, ask..."

"Anything." Sakura nodded, cringing at how deeply Vader's life support system had been dug into his organic body, or what remained of it, and her patient shot: "My son...do you love him?"

"I - -" Sakura stammered, at a loss for words, but then realized that, after everything her and Luke had been through together, after everything they'd said to each other...there was really just one answer, to that question, and smiled. "Yes."

"Then go to him. You both deserve to be together. This old man will be just fine." Vader smiled back, and Sakura nodded, giving him a rebreather - - just in case.

"I was thinking" Luke remarked as soon as she entered the cockpit, already sensing her intentions, and putting the ship into autopilot mode "We've had a good time."

"Who says it's over?" Sakura leaned in, and their lips found that of the other's as the Death Star blossomed in a great ball of plasma that rained fire twelve parsecs away.

 **The Authors' Rant**

 **Dragon: Aaaand that's a wrap folks! Currently the D-man and I are struggling to make old man Han to follow the script for the epilogue, but stay tuned as it will be uploaded on the same day as the first chapter of the sequel, in which we finally learn what happened to our ninja boys and the evil overlo- I mean, mad moon goddess Kaguya!**

 **Stay cool, don't die, and always make sure to dump your bodies in the oce- I mean, look at the time! Bye bye! *Dragon quickly runs off with a large black bag which isn't suspicious at all***

 **D: P.S. guys - - the line 'lightning struck not (once but twice)' is a reference to the Clash's great song Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice) and the title of this chapter is the same as a great Kiefer Sutherland movie set in a Japanese POW camp, but is also a reference to Vader breaking free of his slavery and effectively putting an end to the Galactic Civil War (more or less) by killing Ol' Palps.**

 **Bye!**


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